Individual choice and the structures of history
Subtitle: Alexis de Tocqueville as historian reappraised
By: Harvey Mitchell.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
Subjects: Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859 -- Philosophy; Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859 -- Political and social views; Historians -- France -- Biography; Revolutions -- Philosophy; Decentralization in government -- France
Description: Alexis de Tocqueville is recognized as one of the most important nineteenth-century historians. In this study, Harvey Mitchell examines afresh Tocqueville's works, in particular the Souvenirs of 1848 and his voluminous correspondence, to shed new light on Tocqueville's philosophy of history.

Professor Mitchell exposes the tensions which Tocqueville perceived between determined actions and choice, continuity and change, asking what happens to individual liberty if it is impossible to make a clean break with the past, and if past developments continue to influence the future. Professor Mitchell argues that it was Tocqueville's related concern with liberty in a modern democratic age which led him to write his L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution.

. Drawing on the full range of Tocqueville's writings, Individual choice and the structures of history reveals in them a unity of thought and a deep involvement with the philosophical questions raised by historical continuity and change.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-282) and index.